“Let’s set so double the killer delete select all.”

Speech recognition, regardless of how many academic papers it help produced and how many jobs it help secured, is among the most absolutely hopeless technilogical goals to have been set, let alone to be acheived in the "high" tech industry.

Time again I heard people say "wouldn't it be great if I can use my voice to do this, so I do not need to type it or push the buttoms". The truth is, it will only make everyone an idiot even if it might have half a chance of working properly at all. Imagine in a meeting only 20 people talking to their computers at the same time in a little conference room with 20 cross-firing voices like "delete", "ok", "cancel", "back", "control-alt-delete", "WTF", "my password is ...", "I think the CFO is lying ...", "call my lawyer". Or, in little cute cars yelling "turn on AC", "turn left", "brake", "brake harder", "install updated software", "reboot", "shit"...

I hope other people don't die (refer to “a little bit of echo” later in the quoted paragraps, how robust is this thing, plus M$ software?) because of these corporate people doing this for their own job security. I hope no more children have their career future sucked into this black-hole.

When good demos go (very, very) bad

July 28th, 2006, filed by Eric Auchard Reuters.com

Eleven years after Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead“ predicted humans would one day talk to their computers rather than have to type, the future appeared to be at hand.

At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday, Vista product manager Shanen Boettcher set out to show just how easy to use the speech recognition technology built into upcoming Windows Vista software will be. Like, for example, dictating aloud a simple, heartfelt letter to mom, and having one’s voice automatically transcribed into a computer.

The result was a disaster.

Several tries at making the computer understand the simple salutation “Dear Mom” was read by Microsoft software as “Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all.” Attempts to correct or undo or delete the error only deepened the mess.

It was not just a perfect refutation of the problems of making machines understand human speech. What other features of Microsoft Windows Vista pose trouble, the audience was left to wonder? “The crashing demo didn’t do a lot to instill confidence in the new Windows product,” one Wall Street analyst, who was present at the demo, said.

Windows Vista, already five years in the making, has been postponed by Microsoft several times. Delays have put off the consumer version of Windows until early 2007 — after the crucial holiday shopping season. Vista is scheduled to ship to corporate customers this November, that is, unless more problems are uncovered.

Later, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer blamed the failed speech recognition product demonstration on “a little bit of echo” in the room, which confused the speech-to-text system. To be sure, a second demonstration during the meeting showed how effectively speech recognition can be for navigating around applications, like Microsoft Outlook.

Structured menus appear to work fine. But recognizing random, natural speech still has quite a ways to go, by all appearances: “Let’s set so double the killer delete select all.”

And they do have history: